Biographical Data :

The exiled Uighur activist Rabiya Kadeer at the height of her wealth and influence, in the early 1990s, was considered the most astute and successful woman in China.

Celebrated and accorded high political office by China’s Communist Party rulers who distrusted Rabiya Kadeer but hoped to co-opt her. But then she fell from official grace in the late 1990s. She was stripped of all her titles and much of her wealth, and spent almost six wretched years in prison until she was released in 2005, on medical parole and went to the United States.

She lambasts the Chinese as the illegitimate occupiers of her land and she openly longs to see them gone from the region of Xinjiang where the Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs live.

In her book, Dragon Fighter: One Woman’s Epic Struggle for Peace with China, Rabiya Kadeer sharply criticises Mao Zedong as “one of the most despicable mass murderers of the twentieth century”. The book describes the relentless litany of Chinese abuses and a direct rebuttal of China’s official narrative about its troubled history with the Uighur people.

“Dragon Fighter” was originally published in German in 2007. Her story goes from child refugee, poor housewife, wealthy tycoon and high official to political prisoner and exiled campaigner.